The engagement of attendees of online conferences, such as “webinars” and massive open online course (MOOC) learning sessions, often varies over the duration of the conference based in part upon the content of the conference (e.g. presentation slides, audio/video), as well as the orchestration of the content presentation by one or more presenters. Moreover, there may be multiple speakers in a single session and engagement levels of attendees driven by each speaker may differ.
Unlike in-person conferences in which the attendees are physically present with the presenter, a presenter in an online conference cannot observe whether the attendees are engaged and paying attention to the presentation. Thus, in order to improve attendee engagement, it would be helpful for presenters to know about the effectiveness of delivered content in driving the engagement of attendees of an online conference on a minute-by-minute, slide-over-slide basis throughout the entire conference such that improvements can be made where needed. In addition, hosts of online conferences could use the engagement data to identify and rate presenters in terms of engagement, as well as evaluate the conference content based on the engagement impact it created during presentation.